<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>and i'm a house of cards by astrolesbian</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28365459">and i'm a house of cards</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrolesbian/pseuds/astrolesbian'>astrolesbian</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Getting Together, Jim's childhood home, POV Spock (Star Trek), Shore Leave, T'hy'la, [waves a hand at this whole fic] i am sappy. sorry, hair cutting, they are both women! and lesbians!, this is literally just 5k of them being tender soooooooooooooo yeah</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:49:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,068</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28365459</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrolesbian/pseuds/astrolesbian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“You promised me a real vacation,” Spock reminds her.</p><p>or: jim and spock return home from their five year mission, and figure things out in iowa before the next one.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James T. Kirk/Spock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>127</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and i'm a house of cards</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>• i'm lesbians. so are they</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“Hey, Spock,” Jim says. “Leave’s coming up.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock turns her attention from her PADD to Jim, standing there and beaming into the space between them. Her hair is braided and coiled against her head, as per regulation, but several pieces by her temples and ears have sprung free, wispy and fine next to her bright face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is, Captain,” Spock says. Jim steps closer, sitting down on the open chair at Spock’s lab table. The samples from their last scientific mission are lined up evenly on its surface. Jim looks them over with interest, her blue eyes brightening still more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ll have to tell me more about those at dinner,” she says, nodding at the samples. “I can’t stay long. I just wanted to ask if you have plans for your leave time? Are you going back to Vulcan?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My mother asked that, too,” Spock admits. “I have not committed to anything yet. It is a long journey; I could be of more use at the Academy for a few months, if they need a translator, or an archivist.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” Jim says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why do you ask, Captain?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Jim says, and scratches her nose. “It’s just a thought, obviously, but I’m headed back to my mother’s house—she’s still in space, herself, but we try to go back when we’ve got more than a couple months to look after the place, you know, make sure it’s clean and not falling into disrepair or anything—and if you’d rather work at the Academy, that’s fine, I know you like to be busy—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock searches between the rambling for context. She has gotten accustomed to doing so with Jim, and counts herself quite good at it. “You are asking me to accompany you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim deflates, a little, smiling sheepishly. “Well, yeah, but only if you want. You could take a real vacation, you know? And it—it’s sorta nice out there. I mean. It’s Iowa. But still nice.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock has no cultural context for whether Iowa is any better or worse than other states. Dr. McCoy speaks of Georgia with abject fondness, but Jim generally says </span>
  <em>
    <span>Iowa</span>
  </em>
  <span> in a thoughtful, neutral tone. Just a place, her voice always seems to say, like any other. Spock wonders if she should be put off by this, or enticed. Because it is Jim, she is enticed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would like that, I think,” she says. “Thank you for the offer, Jim.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, really?” Jim says, perking up again. “You mean it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Vulcans do not lie,” Spock says. Jim beams at her, and bounces to her feet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll show you a good time, I promise,” she says, eyes dancing. Spock thinks sometimes there is a spark caught in them, gold in blue like the sun on Earth’s sky. Too bright to look directly at, when she is this joyful. And Spock looks anyway, observes, as she does everything, and the brightness hits her painfully and squarely in the center of the chest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am sure,” Spock says, neutrally. Her idea of a good time and Jim’s hardly overlap, but. Jim’s smile, caught in the artificial light of the lab. The hair peeling free from her pinned-up braids. The way the bone of her wrist shifts under her skin when she waves goodbye. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Exceptions, Spock thinks, turning back to her samples, might be made. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she and Jim had met on the deck of the Enterprise, Spock at Pike’s elbow and Jim bright-eyed and inquisitive, Jim’s smile had been the first thing she’d seen, her voice the first thing she’d heard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Chris, </span>
  <em>
    <span>wow,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” she’d said, looking in love already, staring open-mouthed at the carefully arched silver-grey walls of the ship that would one day be theirs. “What a ship! She’s beautiful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Still a sweet talker, huh, Kirk?” Pike had teased. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean every word,” Jim had said. “This is the best ship I’ve ever been on. It just feels—” She had noticed Spock, then, and Spock had been pinned in place with the weight of those sharp eyes. She had not known the feeling, yet, except that it was one, and therefore suspect. Taboo. She had wanted—something. Something nebulous, undefined. And then she had told herself not to want it, and flexed her hands behind her back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Captain Jim Kirk,” Jim had said, and had given her a deep nod rather than bothering to reach out (and then drop) a hand. The cultural sensitivity should not have surprised her, but it did, nonetheless. Spock nodded back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lieutenant Spock,” she said. “Your first officer, should you choose to keep me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pike speaks very highly of you, Miss Spock—is Miss all right?—anyway, I expect you’ll continue to be exemplary, and I hope we’ll get along. I don’t want to make too many changes. This is a wonderful ship, I just want to keep her that way.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock had sensed something in the sentence then—something more, something longing, something that she knows now to be her captain’s aching, endless desire to know, to see, to understand—different from Spock’s tentative curiosity, her habits of cataloguing and aligning data. Jim only laughs, and reaches out with both hands, and asks endless questions of the universe, and she does not mind when they go unanswered. She had not known this then, only felt a brief glimmer of it, enough to be frightening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Feeling as though she were somehow baring her belly, she said, “Miss is all right, Captain.” She did not suffer most other people calling her </span>
  <em>
    <span>miss.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Too often, Terrans meant it, in some way she had not learned to mean it on Vulcan, or perhaps would not have ever learned to mean it even on Earth. But with the tilt of Jim’s mouth, the way she called herself </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jim.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The smooth muscled line of her shoulders and upper arms, and the regulation trousers she wore. In her voice, </span>
  <em>
    <span>miss</span>
  </em>
  <span> seemed like an endearment and an in-joke all at once, and illogical as it was, Spock wished for it to continue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All right then,” Jim said. Another smile, this one directed at Pike. “See, I said we’d get along fine!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I had my bets on you hating her guts and being blindingly professional,” Pike said, amused, to Spock. “I’m glad you proved me wrong, Spock.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For the record,” Jim had said then, grin softening, “I am, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock’s hands tightened again behind her back. There was a thrum in the air that she had no name for. She took even breaths in and out as the world settled and re-adjusted, becoming used to this new person in it. And Spock—Spock was thinking, too, of the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>miss</span>
  </em>
  <span> in Jim’s low voice. She became abruptly certain she could think about it no longer, or she would surely go mad. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I must attend to my duties,” she’d said, “I will speak with you later, Captain,” not truly knowing to which of them she was speaking, and fled into the elevator. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>It’s late when the Enterprise touches down in San Francisco, the last stop on her five-year journey, and later still when the crew, some weeping, have mostly cleared out for their leave. Spock says goodbye to Nyota, who gives her a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek; to Dr. McCoy, who grumbles something about high blood pressure and Vulcans and then gives her a fierce, watery-eyed look that says Spock will be missed, for the few months until they all come together again. Sulu gives her a trembling smile and seems to surprise himself by crying: Spock does not know what to do to comfort him, and Chekov comes forward instead, taking his arm and calling him an old fool, waving Spock off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve got a husband and daughter to get home to, da?” Spock hears Chekov say as she turns into the next hallway. “No need for hysterics—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck you,” Sulu says, “you were crying over your breakfast this morning,” and Spock is gone, drifting like a ghost down the hall of her ship. Jim’s ship, really, but hers, too; theirs in a quiet way that warms her heart when she thinks about it for too long. She has been offered a captaincy. She has turned it down without thinking twice. There is nothing for her that does not include Jim, and there is nothing for Jim that does not include this ship. Being her first officer is, in many ways, the best version of Spock. Or perhaps they are the best versions of themselves, together.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She finds Jim on the observation deck, looking at nothing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jim,” she says quietly. “It’s time to go.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim’s mouth is trembling when she turns. “It’s all over now,” she says. “Five years, and it—it went so fast.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is over,” Spock confirms, for it would not do to lie. “And it will begin again. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We</span>
  </em>
  <span> will begin again. And there will be new things to see and to learn, new people to meet, new stars to chart. But first we rest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rest,” Jim echoes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You promised me a real vacation,” Spock reminds her, and this seems to draw Jim from her sorrow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughs, watery and thin. “Yeah! Yeah, I did, didn’t I. In Iowa, shit, I could have taken you to—I don’t know, to Paris, or Shanghai, or something—show you the best of what Earth has—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have seen beautiful, impressive things, Jim,” Spock says, and touches her shoulder; lets her fingertips rest there. “I have no interest in seeing them now. I would like to see the parts of Earth that belong to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim takes a deep breath, and scrubs at her wet face with her hands. “Anyone ever tell you you’re too much?” she mutters. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dr. McCoy tells me so very often,” Spock tells her. Jim laughs, and gives her a grateful look, reaching up once—thoughtlessly—to touch the back of her hand, where it rests against her clothed shoulder. The brush of skin, so unplanned, feels like a lick of flame. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock does not move her hand. Jim does, though, and takes a step back, clearing her throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bones always has a lot to say, huh,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck. “You ready to go? Thanks for coming to get me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is no trouble,” Spock says, and quells disappointment at the loss of the fleeting touch. “I am ready.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They leave their ship behind in the hangar bay. Spock turns back for one last look as they set off in the car; Jim has not looked away, and doesn’t until the Enterprise is completely out of sight. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They spend a night sleeping in a Starfleet room, the two full beds unnecessary but welcome. Jim sleeps: her long hair loose and falling over her face, her skin too-visible in a tank top and shorts. Spock meditates against her headboard, back straight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next morning, Jim yawns and showers and dresses, all while Spock sits with her eyes half-lidded, hoping she might pass as still meditating. It is like seeing her in their shared washroom in the mornings, and not; more intimate by far. Spock feels guilty for looking, but at the same time, for Jim to be here, all golden skin and sleepy eyes, and to go unwatched, feels somehow cruel. To both of them. So she watches from her place on her still-made bed, watches Jim gather her hair into a ponytail and tuck her shirt into her pants. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Watches, still, as Jim sits down next to her and puts a hand on her knee. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock has taken to thinking, sometimes, about what it is to have a life, and a body, and a spirit. About what it is to be one’s own. About what it is to want something and to let herself want it. She has spent a long time—a very long time—attempting to resolve something within her that cannot, perhaps, be resolved. She is Vulcan. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Jim reminds her, constantly, gently, she is human, too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She has thought for as long as she can remember that one would have to win out over the other. She feared the depth of her passion, the ache of it—she had half thought that if her human side won, everything her Vulcan side had managed to lock away would bust out of her all at once, and kill her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It has been a long five years. Spock is tired of imagining her spirit engaged in constant battle. She would prefer to see if it can manage to be something else. Something united, and curious. Something whole. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest comes down to wanting Jim—wanting her unrelentingly and achingly in a way she had also, at first, feared. But sometime between one mission and another, they had been friends anyway, and Spock had still wanted her, and as the years wound on it had stayed in her chest, constant and burning. Jim’s laugh and her hands and the way she moved around the bridge, the sharp cocky edge of her smile when she knew she had the upper hand, the way she looked when playing a winning move in a chess game. Spock’s missing piece, her first and best friend, her equal in every way. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This leads them to now: Jim smiling sleepily at her from her place on the bed, and the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>t'hy'la</span>
  </em>
  <span> burning in Spock’s mouth, swallowed down like too-hot tea. The strange, foreign idea that now—there might be time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We gotta go, sweetheart,” Jim says, hand on her knee, thumb moving back and forth. The endearment is absentminded; Spock stretches under it anyway, a cat in the sun. “I can get you something to eat from the lobby.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No need,” Spock says, and unfolds herself, sliding carefully to her feet. “I am ready.” </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>When they reach Jim’s house, it is midday, the sun pleasant on the top of Spock’s head. She grew up in Vulcan’s deserts, and will likely still need a coat for most of her time here, but she can see the temperature growing comfortable enough for Jim to do shorts or T-shirts as she putters around the property looking for things to fix. The thought is a pleasant one. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When she looks up, the sky yawns above them, deep and blue. Spock has seen many skies: logically, she ought not to be awed by it. But this one is Jim’s. It was hers when she ran through Iowa on bare feet, in overalls a size too big. Somehow Spock can picture her here, without being told anything more. A small round-faced child with a mop of blonde hair and a missing tooth. Sunshine caught in her skin, in her eyes. Alone here under the yawning sky, learning to dream of flight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She had thought Iowa would seem too small to contain Jim, but this sky is so wide. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I know,” Jim murmurs, and takes her elbow to lead her forward over the grass. “It’s so much, right? Gets me every time.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You implied there would not be anything beautiful in Iowa,” Spock tells her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim laughs, low and pleased. “Well. I guess I didn’t think about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The house is all white siding and green trim, the roof lined with solar panels. The yard would be more reasonably called a meadow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Will you cut the grass?” Spock asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eh,” Jim says, and waves a hand. “If you want. Ma and I usually just cut a few paths down to the river and to the shed and that kind of thing, and we leave the rest be. Bugs need a place to live. And rabbits, and things.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Spock says, after a moment of consideration. “No, I think you should leave it the way it is.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Attagirl,” Jim says. “C’mon, I’ll show you the house.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The house is unremarkable but for pictures of Jim on the walls. Spock was right: she was charming even as a child, bright-eyed and gap-toothed and smiling wide. Jim shoves her past the pictures, huffing and embarrassed, so Spock decides to investigate them later. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Vulcans do not dream, as a rule: Spock does, though. It is one of the more human things about her. Not often, and not deeply, but she dreams. The next few weeks feel like one of her dreams at first: the sky yawning and deep, deep blue, the grass high and blowing in the spring wind around her. The dirt, soft and crumbling under her ready feet. The pervasive feeling of stillness, of peace. And Jim, always Jim: Jim in t-shirts and shorts as Spock suspected, Jim fixing the sink and digging in an abandoned garden and reading six books at once, draped over the porch swing. Spock explores, at first, the way she does in dreams—testing its limits. But this vision doesn’t fade, or morph back into nothingness when she pokes at its edges. It stays. She is forced to determine that this means it is real. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She picks her way through the fields anyway, walking miles to the neighboring farms and greeting the animals. She can sense low, thin emotion from them if she touches them, their fur-covered backs that press close to the fence. What they feel is nothing like what she deliberately shields against from people, but she lets it soak into her, the way she hardly ever has before. They are content, these creatures, these white cows and black horses. They have the sun and the world and their food, and there is little more they could want. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim finds her one afternoon, standing by the fence of a pasture, wrapped in a sweater. “Cats,” she says, “Spock, cats in the shed,” and they take off together in a run, Jim laughing and Spock’s mouth twitching with the desire to laugh, too. Jim takes her by the wrist and guides her into the abandoned shed, where, as she exclaimed, a pile of cats is coiled, one on top of the other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The mother hisses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, baby, no, don’t worry,” Jim murmurs. “We aren’t going to hurt them, baby. I swear. I just wanted Spock to see.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, the mother cat calms, Jim’s voice soothing her. One of the kittens raises its small grey head, and yawns with a long pink tongue, its eyes glued shut. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not bad, huh?” Jim says, and Spock looks at the white gleam of her teeth in the shadow of the barn, looks for it until she can imagine the outline of her next to it. She can pick Jim’s face from darkness. This is another thing she’s learned, in recent years. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fascinating,” she says, and Jim throws her head back to laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You like them, huh? Might be a hard sell to Starfleet if you want to keep them for study,” she teases, and stands. “But I’ll see what I can do.” </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>They are playing chess in the living room, Spock sitting straight up with a cup of tea balanced carefully in her lap, and Jim sprawled, when Spock says, “I’d like you to cut my hair.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’d like me to </span>
  <em>
    <span>what?”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jim says, putting a rook down. “Check.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock does not roll her eyes, but she is tempted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cut it,” she says. “I—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She touches the queen; she will have to move it, now. That’s all right. She can think of something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve had your hair the same for five years,” Jim says. Jim herself has had at least six different hairstyles in the time Spock has known her; short when they’d met and then slowly inching long again. Spock trims her bangs carefully and by hand every month and the ends of her hair every three. Just another way they are different. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock takes Jim’s rook and says, “I would like it shorter,” and gestures at her shoulders. “Cut to here.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You sure this isn’t post-mission panic?” Jim says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Panic is useless,” Spock says, arching an eyebrow. “Illogical.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Spock,” Jim says, unimpressed. She takes Spock’s bishop. “Check. I mean, sure, I’ll do it if you want me to, I just—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock does not find a piece to play with this time, for security. Instead she only looks up to meet Jim’s eyes and says, “I have never worn it differently. Maybe it would feel—” And then she struggles, the words lost. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She doesn’t usually use words like </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and Jim knows it. “Spock,” she says, a great deal more gently now. She reaches across the chessboard and taps her finger against Spock’s skirt-covered knee. “If it’s what you want, then of course.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is a difficult thing to know myself, Jim,” Spock says. “I never tried, before.” Before you. Before our ship. Before—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sweetheart,” Jim murmurs, awash with tenderness. “You don’t have to explain. I get it.” She smiles, and taps her own chest the same way she’d tapped Spock’s knee. “When?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Spock loves her all over again, her understanding, her kindness. Her willingness to stand alongside Spock for all these years as she figures out what it means to be herself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tomorrow,” she says. </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So, about here, then,” Jim says, carefully measuring the distance with her hands. Spock nods. She had not been prepared, really, for the reality of Jim’s hands in her hair, carefully brushing it back. Her nails brush Spock’s scalp, and she fights down a shiver. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Spock says. Now that the haircut has been committed to, it is not frightening. It is exciting, a little, mostly because Jim is touching her. She squares her shoulders and admits to none of this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s kind of a lot to cut, isn’t it?” Jim says, worrying at her lower lip. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock shrugs. Jim has promised not to touch her bangs, so there is really very little that can go wrong. “It will grow,” she replies. Jim’s hands work their way through her hair again, and this time she tips her head into it, absently, forgetting that she shouldn’t. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Jim says, and her nails scratch again, just a little; Spock’s eyes slip half-closed. “Okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I trust you,” Spock says. “Do not worry so much, Jim.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim hesitates, and then Spock feels a kiss being pressed to the crown of her head; light and dry. It could be called friendly, she supposes. Sometimes Jim kisses Dr. McCoy like this, when her day has been long or a patient recovering slower than she’d like. But she has never kissed Spock, not anywhere. She has always been so scrupulous—no arms around shoulders, no touching Spock’s hands. Only careful, acceptable touches, on her knee or her shoulder. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock keeps her breath even, and leans her head back far enough to look Jim in the eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My hair, Jim,” she says, and Jim swallows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, ma’am,” she murmurs, and carefully sections off the top layer with a clip. Spock keeps her eyes closed as the wet comb works through her hair, uncomfortable but for the fact that it is in Jim’s hand. She waits for the brief moments of warm pressure, Jim’s fingertips on her scalp and the back of her neck, and becomes so focused on this that the </span>
  <em>
    <span>snip</span>
  </em>
  <span> of the scissors is a surprise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five inches of black hair falls to the ground, next to her foot. She and Jim both look at it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” Spock says. There is a curious feeling in her chest. Contentment, mingled with pride. She thinks about wearing this hair when she tried to enter the Vulcan Academy, always in a clean knot at the back of her head. Utilitarian, precise, even. Logical to keep hair long so that it could be tucked away, or short enough that it would not be bothersome. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock has built her life on logic. It is her cornerstone, her safe place: when the universe is too vast and wide, she retreats to her mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Is it not also logical,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Michael had told her, once, </span>
  <em>
    <span>to seek that which gives us contentment, and purpose? </span>
  </em>
  <span>Her voice soft, in the chiding way of sisters who thought they knew you better than you did. Her father’s voice, the brief understanding in his eyes that Spock had chased for decades and now felt wary of. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I married your mother because I loved her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>She looks away. It is a lot, she thinks, to pin on a haircut.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You hate it,” Jim guesses. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jim,” Spock says, and smiles briefly, waiting until Jim meets her eyes and sees it. “Keep going.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim’s eyebrows arch. “You </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> hate it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock lifts a shoulder. “How will I know before you are finished?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim laughs, then, low and sweet, and lifts the scissors again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next few cuts are quiet, the thin </span>
  <em>
    <span>snip</span>
  </em>
  <span> enough to cling to as more and more hair falls to the floor. Jim is so careful with it, so precise; though far from an expert, she takes her time, maneuvers Spock’s damp hair until it’s sitting in the right places, measuring the length over and over again with her fingers. Spock closes her eyes and drifts, luxuriating in the attention, the unfamiliar rush of being touched so gently. The way the slow heat of the press of Jim’s hands slides down her spine and settles there, odd but welcome. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim ruffles her hair, and lets the upper half of it down. She finger-combs through this, too, and Spock allows herself to lean into it, chasing the firm pressure of her touch, just for a second. It’s enough to make Jim’s hands pause, and then to brush forward, tucking back her bangs, calloused fingertips dancing over her forehead. Then the pointed ridge of her ear. Tugging, gently, on her left earlobe. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock hums, a little pleased sound from the back of her throat, and leans back further, arching her neck. Blinks her eyes open.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, god,” Jim murmurs, and then Spock is being kissed, once, a little clumsy and upside-down. Jim’s mouth, as warm as her fingers, a little cracked from Iowa wind and lack of lip balm. It’s just a single press, two of Jim’s fingers tilting up Spock’s chin, her mouth fitting itself around Spock’s lower lip before she pulls back, and looks at her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jim,” Spock says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to make things weird,” Jim says. “You’re my first officer and you—we’re unstoppable, you know that? You and me. The things we can do together. The things we </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> done together. But that’s not why.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock considers this, and finds Jim’s hand in the meantime. It has shifted from her chin back into her hair, cyclically smoothing through it. She takes it by the wrist, and, maintaining eye contact, draws said wrist to her lips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would be lewd on Vulcan, she thinks. The inside of Jim’s wrist is paler than the outer sides of her arms, less freckled, and she can barely see the blueness of a vein through skin. It’s soft and smooth under her mouth. She wants Jim’s fingers under her mouth, too; her neck, her ears, her lips. Wants everything, too many things to list. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim makes a noise when her mouth and Jim’s skin touch. Half-surprised, half-wanting. A tone she hasn’t ever heard on Jim, and wants more of immediately. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So I guess that’s a yes,” Jim says, her voice high. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have loved you,” Spock says, thoughtfully, “a long time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She intends to leave it at that. But Jim’s relaxed hand tightens into a fist, and she presses her face into Spock’s damp hair, breathing in as though she might cry. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” Spock says, a little more panicked, now. “Jim.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, sorry,” Jim says, and raises her face. She kisses Spock’s temple, uncertain. “Sorry. I just. Sweetheart.” The word has more meaning now, Spock thinks. “You love me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock turns her face into hers, presses her forehead to the soft edge of Jim’s cheek. “I do love nothing in the world so well as you,” she says, and waits for the hitch of Jim’s breath, the strange combination of a laugh and a sob. Outside, the sun is going down, leaving them both draped in gold. “Is not that strange?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t just quote Shakespeare at me,” Jim says, complaining, voice gravelly with tears. “I’ll die.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would prefer if you did not,” Spock tells her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim laughs again, presses against her back and wraps her arms around her shoulders, a careful, tender hug. “I love you with so much of my heart,” she says, completing the quote a few lines late, “that none is left to protest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Spock understands, then, the urge to cry. “Jim,” she says, the first word into a world where she is loved, where this strange and clever and brilliant woman loves her. “Jim.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, damn,” Jim says, “I still have to finish your hair. Me and my timing, huh?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kiss me again,” Spock says. “And then finish.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim’s grin, this time, is a bolt of lightning. “Yes, ma’am,” she says, and leans down.</span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The morning finds her in Jim’s bed, watching as the light shifts on the ceiling, Jim’s arm thrown heavily around her waist. Her hair is loose, and likely messy. Its ends only barely brush her shoulders. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There will be time, Spock thinks. They have two months still ahead of them, here in this quiet place, and there will be rest, and there will be time, and she will grow into the feeling of Jim’s arms around her, the sweet ache of teeth on her neck. She will be able to explain the word </span>
  <em>
    <span>t’hy’la,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and the way it had enfolded her once, after a hard mission when Jim was the only thing she could think of, the only face she could bear to see. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We’re unstoppable,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Jim had said, and they are, and Spock doesn’t want to be anything else except the thing that they are, together, logic and passion and affection and intelligence, their rough edges smoothed by the other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jim’s eyelashes flutter as she wakes. She really is extraordinarily beautiful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ashayam,” Spock murmurs, and kisses Jim on the mouth; catching where the morning sunlight fell, tracing it up her jaw before pulling back again, and laying her head back down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um,” Jim says. It’s not a complaint: it might even be a whine. Her cheeks are painted red, sudden and sweet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Spock arches an eyebrow, joy squirming pleasantly in her chest. “Fascinating,” she says, and Jim laughs and whacks her with a pillow. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this fic is a gift for my beloved friend who sent me a text [checks phone] like four days ago saying "lesbian spirk" and then i said "haha" and blacked out. i love you baby i hope you like this. i will probably write you more if you ask</p><p>notes:<br/>• it was important to me that jim was still called jim. i think that is a sexy thing for a lesbian to be called<br/>• this was supposed to have like 35% more smut in it like this was the first time i went into something actually intending to write sex and then didn't. whoops<br/>• sorry for the much ado quotes. in my defense jim and spock would be like this i think<br/>• i wrote this in the span of like 24 hours so no one beta'd this. i DID look it over but if there are glaring mistakes, no there aren't &lt;3<br/>• title is from sparks fly by taylor swift. if you know you know</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>